Good Things for Mary

Summary

Mary is employed as a censor working in one of HM High Security women's prisons. Her job is to read incoming and outgoing personal mail between prisoners and their loved ones. She also has to listen in to their personal phone conversations. After five years of this she is, naturally, stressed. As the story starts, she is about to give in her notice, but at last good things start to happen to her.

All references in this book to people, places, or organisations are entirely fictitious, and if they seem to refer to reality, that is purely accidental.

The author takes responsibility for, and apologises for any typing or layout errors.

With thanks to my loving wife, Helena, who supported me in my writing and helped me with the publishing of this short story.

Prologue

Mary’s life had never been what she had hoped

it would be. She had resigned herself to being

alone and lonely.

But…

A good thing can happen to your heart once in while,

even though you may think that you’re too old.

And sometimes, more than one!

1 The Job

Another long day in prison!

Mary had been coming to the prison for five years now, and it was beginning to wear her down! But what else was there to do? After all, she wasn’t brilliantly qualified, was she? She was single - a spinster they used to call it in the old days - she hated the word, but wasn’t that what she was becoming?

She had looked in the mirror this morning as she got ready for work, and although she was tired, as usual, she didn’t think she looked too bad - at least not for her thirty-two years of age. She was of medium height, slim, quite fit (thanks to her running machine), wore fashionable small-framed specs, her brown hair was glossy, straight and pulled back into a pony-tail, and altogether, she thought she looked OK. So why wasn’t there a man in her life, she wondered.

She couldn’t avoid the recurring thought that it was working in this depressing place and doing this very depressing job! But there was a recession on, and jobs were still hard to come by for someone with just 6 GCSEs. Also, it was a factor that, as fate would have it, she lived only about a mile away from the solid grey walls of HMP Warbold - the local female high security prison. What had got her the job was her ability to read well, plus the fact that she was prepared to do the job! The consequent social problem of having a job here was that she couldn’t tell anyone where she worked and especially